National Unemployment Rate Forecast To Edge Higher in June

According to a group of economists that were polled by Reuters, the national unemployment rate is expected to tick up to 9.8% when the June job numbers are released later this week.

Some economists are predicting that the unemployment rate will actually DROP to 9.6% in June (tough to imagine), while others are predicting that the national unemployment rate will spike as high as 9.9%.

The unemployment rate in May of 2010 was 9.7%, down by 9.9% the month before. The hiring of over 400k TEMPORARY employees to work on Census 2010 helped to goose the May numbers. However, the government laid off nearly 250k of these people in June, which is why the national unemployment rate is expected to tick higher.

The national unemployment rate is actually higher than it was in June of 2009, as various government attempts to re-energize the US job market have failed.

In June of 2009, the US unemployment rate was 9.5%. 12 months later, and things have actually gotten worse, as the country is expected to post a 9.8% number in June of 2010.

Eight months ago (October 2009), the US unemployment rate hit a peak (and least, we're hoping that it was the peak) of 10.2%. Since then, the jobless rate has trended down only slightly - certainly not the marked improvement that many people were hoping would be taking place by this point.

In December of 1982, the national unemployment rate spiked to 10.8% as the United States battled through a particularly bad case of stagflation (high inflation and weak economic activity). Prior to 2009, this was the last time that the country had witnessed an unemployment rate of over 10%.

Eight months after spiking to 10.8% in December of 1982, the national unemployment rate had dropped to 9.5% (August of 1983). Just four months after that (December 1983), and the jobless rate was down to 8.3%.

Will we show significant improvement a year from the peak this time around as well? Will the October 2010 jobless rate be significantly lower than the October 2009 peak numbers? Seems doubtful..

The bottom line is that an expected moderate to strong economic recovery is simply not taking hold in the United States. With each passing day, more and more economists and pundits are alerting Americans to the possibility of a "double dip recession" in the country.

Business owners are still worried about the state of the economy so they are holding off on hiring new people, and consumers are saving more as they prepare for another possible downturn. This will likely translate to more pain for the economy in the months to come, and an unemployment rate that will likely continue to hover at around 10%.